Neural Correlates of Adolescent Irritability and Its Comorbidity With Psychiatric Disorders

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • IMAGEN Consortium - (Author)

Abstract

Objective: Irritable mood, a common and impairing symptom in psychopathology, has been proposed to underlie the developmental link between oppositional problems in youth and depression in adulthood. We examined the neural correlates of adolescent irritability in IMAGEN, a sample of 2,024 14-year-old adolescents from 5 European countries. Method: The Development and Well-Being Assessment (DAWBA) was used to assess attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, major depressive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. Three items from the DAWBA, selected as close matches to the Affective Reactivity Index, were used to assess irritability. Structural magnetic resonance imaging was examined using whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analysis, and functional magnetic resonance imaging was examined during a stop signal task of inhibitory control. Imaging data were included in structural equation models to examine the direct and indirect associations between irritable mood and comorbid DSM diagnoses. Results: Whole-brain voxelwise analysis showed that adolescent irritable mood was associated with less gray matter volume and less neural activation underlying inhibitory control in frontal and temporal cortical areas (cluster-correction at p <.05). Structural equation models suggested that part of the observed smaller gray matter volume was exclusively driven by irritability separate from direct relationships between generalized anxiety disorder (or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, major depressive disorder, or oppositional defiant disorder) and gray matter volume. Conclusion: This study identifies adolescent irritability as an independent construct and points to a neurobiological correlate to irritability that is an important contributing feature to many psychopathological disorders.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1371-1379
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Volume59
Issue number12
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2020
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 32860907
ORCID /0000-0001-5099-0274/work/143783435
ORCID /0000-0003-1477-5395/work/143783489
ORCID /0000-0001-5398-5569/work/150329506
ORCID /0000-0002-8493-6396/work/150330241

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

Keywords

  • adolescent irritability, gray matter volume, inhibitory control, psychopathology